Myr took a moment to catch her breath. The guards were slower than she was, less able to navigate the twists and turns in the city streets because of their armour, but they were infinitely more familiar with them than she was. She couldnt rest for long.
She ducked down behind a barrel of something smelly that had been left outside a house and waited. It wasnt long before she heard the guards feet stomping down a nearby streets, signalling to each other that their quarry had yet to be found. She waited a little bit longer, trusting that her father had trained her correctly. When the noises faded in just that particular way, she was up and on her feet again, running, hoping to get in behind her pursuers, where they had already looked and would have no reason to recheck for a while. She had to get back up the hill. To finish her goal within the citadel.
The inner walls were several levels above her. From here, nearly back at the outer walls, they looked insurmountable. When she was younger and living outside, she thought they were. An impregnable fortress atop the hill, keeping her kind from their place. In truth, the inner walls were dotted with gates and windows that were easy to sneak through. It was the outer walls that were the problem, and she could not afford to be pushed all the way back down.
On the mountain side of the city the others were also avoiding the guards. Thankfully they werent being actively pursued, but they were clearly on high alert. Something had happened elsewhere and without the signal, or Myr to assist, they had to assume the plan was still on and they kept digging into the side of the hill, hoping to get deep enough before it was too late.
“Someones coming,” the watcher at the door hissed before pulling the door closed and waiting. At his word, everyone inside the house had come to a complete stop. With everyone on high alert, even the smallest thing out of the ordinary was probable cause and these guards would not knock.
As rehearsed, the hole was covered over and everyone who wasnt covered in dirt was gathered around a table playing a card game with jugs of beer half drunk nearby. To anyone watching, it was a typical early evening.
They all waited as the boots of the guards stomped past their door, uninterested in anything in this part of the city. They all let out a sigh of relief and immediately got back to work.
Myr knew this was their only chance. The last chance. If this failed, then it was all over. The Regent would use this as an excuse to wipe out their camps and declare anyone left a terrorist. He had already done that, of course, but he would finally have enough for the other nations to go along with it. It was do or die and it was all on her shoulders.
She had managed to lose her pursuers, for now at least. She could still hear them, slightly lower than her, but not far enough away for her to openly run up the hill. As much as it frustrated her, there were still people in the city who were on their side. Who would turn her over just to have this all ended.
Her time was limited, they would be deep enough into the hill as the sun disappeared and when that happened, they would go ahead with the rest of the plan, whether she was there or not. They might be willing to sacrifice themselves for their goals, but she wasnt. She needed to finish her plans and get far enough away from the citadel. But with each passing moment, she knew it was less and less likely. At some point she would need to cut her losses and hope The Regent was caught in the explosion. He would die without knowing who did it, probably, but he would die.
The twisted roads that climbed through the city from the outer walls at the base of the hill, all the way through the inner walls and into the citadel itself, were crowded with guards. The attack in the morning, the most successful of any of the rebel attacks, had really stirred the nest.
It had been the right course of action, of course. There was no way around it. But it made Jacon’s task just that little bit harder. Besides Myr, he was the most important rebel within the city walls. He had the final part of the large bomb that was to be used to bring down the citadel and with it, hopefully, The Regent. But none of that would happen if he couldnt make it to the house with his component.
He was a few yards behind the guards as they stomped around the city streets. Behind him he could hear another patrol, just as loud – which was a blessing, Jacon thought – coming closer.
“Hurry up, you bastards,” he muttered, waiting for the ones in front to move out of sight.
As they did, he moved with them, hiding in a doorway just as the group behind him crossed the street behind him. Taking a deep breath, relieved, he continued along the road until he found the house where everyone else was.
“Jesus, knock first,” someone said as Jacon pushed through the door.
“You should have had a watcher here,” he said, shrugging and tossing the bomb part he carried to someone who looked it over, nodded and took it into another room.
“I was watching, but I came in so the guards wouldnt see me.”
“Theyre not really interested in anything up here,” Jacon said. “They want Myr and she went down.”
“Down?” they all shouted at once.
“Shit, what do we do?” the watcher asked, running his hand through his hair. “What if she isnt clear?”
Jacon looked apologetic for a moment before steeling himself. “She knows the risks,” he said. “And so do we. We cant let this drag on until dawn. How much deeper do we need to be?”
“Not much,” came an echoey shout from inside the hole they had been digging. “Another hour, maybe.”
Jacon carefully stuck his head out of the door and looked around at the sky. “Ok, good. Dusk is upon us, and were about an hour or so from sundown. Get the bomb prepped and get it in the hole. If were caught now, we just do it however deep we are and hope for the best, got it?”
“Got it,” came a voice from the other room.
“Yeah,” came other, less certain voices.
Myr was learning the same thing that Jacon had learned; the higher up the hill you went, the more guards there were, but the less interested they were in anything in particular. They were on patrol, not searching. But since the attack this morning, they had been on high alert, sending everyone out.
She waited behind an empty house. The inner walls were only a couple of streets above her now, but the sun was almost completely beyond the horizon now. The bomb would be complete and if Jacon was in charge, which he would be, then it was in the hole waiting to be detonated regardless of what she did. Perhaps she should just leave, head back to her father. Give up on these ideas and just survive to see what happens next.
There was a gap in the patrols and her feet automatically carried her up the hill.
She was outside the wall now. Her back against it. On the other side, within the confines of the citadel, she could hear people going about their day. They werent concerned about the rebels or the attack. They felt safe, happy even. Myr felt a pang of anger course through her. How dare they. How dare they feel safe when their ruler, the man they bowed to, had deprived her kind of the same comfort they had and took for granted. She knew then that she would sacrifice herself, just like the others. She finally understood her father, and what he had been striving for since before she had been born.
She took a look around, finally able to take stock of everything. She had run around the entire city. She was on the far side of the citadel as the others. In a way, this was better. If she was able to make her way inside from here, if she was noticed it would drive the patrols and guards away from them. They could do their part with less chance of being caught.
She took the last grenade out of her satchel and considered how this should work. There were innocents in the city below her. Some had already died, and more would before this was all over. But if she threw this down, she would be actively and directly responsible for them. Her sense of deniability would be gone.
“Whatever is necessary,” her father had said before she left that morning.
She sighed and pulled the pin out of the grenade and lobbed it as hard as she could into the streets beneath her. It disappeared into some alleys she hoped were empty and she climbed into a small gap in the wall as she waited for hell to break loose.
“Well?” Jacon shouted into the tunnel.
“The rock has changed,” came the frustrated reply. “Its harder. We’re close to where we are meant to be, but we cant get through this rock.”
“We dont have time, we need to blow it now.”
Myr heard the grenade explode and she pulled herself into the citadel, landing in a small garden. No one was around. As she got to her feet, there was a deep rumble somewhere on the far side of the hill and the ground lurched beneath her before completely caving in and she plummeted into a deep blackness.
Jacon and the other rebels had packed the bomb as deep as they could into the hole. They all held hands and prayed. They prayed for themselve, their cause and they prayed for Myr. If this failed, everything was on her. The explosion rocked the hill from the citadel to all the way to the outer walls. The house and most of the surrounding neighbourhood disappeared into a deep cavern as the rock that was too hard to dig through shattered easily under the explosive force.
Deep in the hill, buried deep beneath the city, in a series of catacombs forgotten by everyone who lived on this entire planet, the shock of the explosion dislodged a rock made of some alien material and from the small sliver of a gap, a shadow. Even more forgotten than the catacombs. A myth become religion. The truth behind the Regency. The true king. The godking had been released.